Again, CTDs, excepting the infamous "A" key CTD were not ever an issue. This is stranger than that. I agree with Wilcke. This smells like an overheating problem or a problem with not enough power to the graphics card.
I had the identical symptoms with my Asus A8N-32 SLI deluxe board and dual 7600GT SLI configuration. I could jack the graphics settings only so far until my whole machine locked up and went black. I found on a page pretty much all by itself in the middle of irrelevent drivel, that the Asus board had an "EZ Connector" whose well-named function was to have a molex connecter plugged into it to supply SLIed cards that did not have their own auxiliary power connectors. Well hidden on the page was an offhand comment about possible system instability if the EZ connector wasn't used when it was needed. NO DUH!!!!!
I plugged a Molex connector in there, firewalled all the settings to the max and never had another problem until my infamous graphics card follies.
And that's another thing. There is a little known electronics plague affecting motherboards, graphics cards, power supplies and just about everything on Earth that uses electrolytic capacitors. In a case of attempted industrial espionage in the far east, an employee stole the plans for making electrolytic capacitors from his company and sold them to competitors, who became the number one supplier in the world thereby. The only problem is that the formula for the electrolyte was purposely missing a key ingredient: the preservative. The counterfeit caps work fine for between six months and a couple of years and then...
That's my EVGA 7600GT card with several exploded caps there. EVGA is one of a handful of the most reputable companies making graphics cards and this has happened to two of these so far. Sometimes, rather than blow the top, the caps leak out the bottom, which is much harder to see. Needless to say, cheaper off-brand cards are even more likely to fail, but victim #1 so far is Dell Computers. Nobody escaped this plague and it continues.
But you can entirely dismiss the idea that the game is somehow defective. It is true that only a couple of games, Crysis and FSX come to mind, put similar loads on your graphics system. That is what state of the art games do and your system is supposed to be able to handle that. Your specs are good (better than mine). So I'm afraid you have to go down the Wilke/Rockin route. If it is defective electronics, the problem will get worse and components failing that way often take other components with them to the grave due to unregulated power in the wrong place.
Ain't computers fun?
